Has a lack of, or an abundance of, siblings affected your personality?

I am so sorry to hear of the sadness in your life trendygran, good friends are worth their weight in gold . Hope you have peace at Christmas.

Thank you for such personal and honest answers to the question in this thread.

We all have in common the fact that no one can choose the position they fit into the family, it just happens! Neither can we change it. Interesting also, that many of us wish we had not been an "only" and some even wish they had been.

I am the last of 4 but grew up an only child really. my eldest sister left home the night i was born, next left when i was 3 and by the time i was 4 my brother was in the R.N. By the time i was 8 they were all back home bossing me around so much i felt i had 5 parents. I am nearly 50 years of age and still treated as the baby !

I was raised as an only child and only discovered in later life that I have half-siblings on both my mother and father's side. We are now in touch, but there is no real closenness which springs from a shared upbringing, I think.
So really I am an only child, I suppose. I would absolutely love to have had a close relationship with siblings, but then the grass is always greener on the other side, isn't it.
We might have loathed each other...

Looking at the heading of this thread I started off wondering how you could possibly know when you are what you are. BUT having looked at my family, both siblings and cousins, I think you have a valid point Lillie and I think perhaps it is the circumstances in which we find ourselves which 'condition' us to be the way we are.

#wandering off and doing more big thinks!